Album Review
The Sword - Gods Of The Earth And Age Of WintersThe Sword – Gods Of The Earth And Age Of Winters

If you are lucky enough to be going to see Metallica at the end of the month then you are in for a special treat as The Sword are one of the support acts on the tour and I couldn’t praise the band enough, they are simply fantastic, if you are into big fat guitar riffs in the style of Black Sabbath and Metallica and mouth watering guitar solos then The Sword are a band that are going to get you excited and when I say excited I mean very excited.

Just in case you are yet to hear of the band I will give you some background information, they are a quartet who formed in Austin Texas in 2004, they have been signed to Kemado Records since late 2005, they went on to release their debut album ’Age Of Winters’ during February 2006 and then went on to release their latest album ‘Gods Of Earth’ during April 2008.

If you haven’t got either of the albums by The Sword then your lucky day is just around the corner as the band are releasing the albums bundled as a special double pack to coincide with the Metallica tour and if you shop around you will be able to pick up the package for £10 for both album which is a mighty fine bargain if you ask me especially considering how quality both albums are.

The band’s first album ‘Age Of Winters’ is a great album from start to finish, it features just 9 tracks but runs for a nifty 42 minutes, if anyone wants to relive that Black Sabbath moment and hear killer Tony Iommi style guitar riffs then look no further than ‘Age Of Winters’ by The Sword as it sounds like a heavier better produced version of Black Sabbath.

The album opens with ‘Celestial Crown’ the song is a short instrumental track and it’s a nice build of how the album means to go on, as soon as the song reaches its climax ‘Barael’s Blade’ kicks in with meaty guitar riffs and big kick arse constant drumming and J.D Cronise vocals coming in with a spoken word type style sitting in nicely with the groove of the song.

The whole album is really strong with the way it has hard hitting riff after hard hitting riff, enough groove to get the biggest of idiots dancing along, and a set of the best sounding vocals I have heard in metal in a long time and to top that off the lyrics are well written as well.

The album ‘Age Of Winters’ introduces you to The Sword nicely but it is ‘Gods Of The Earth’ that really blows you away, the album features 11 tracks and runs for 47minutes and every minute of the album is amazing, where ‘Age Of Winters’ was quite heavy and turned up to 10, The Sword have stepped things up even more for ‘Gods Of The Earth’ and turned things right up to 11. As soon as you hear the instrumental introduction of ‘The Sundering’ you clearly see that the band have beefed their sound up with the thick heavy guitar riffs.

’The Frost-Giant’s Daughter’ is a great song with the way it is jam packed with thick thrash metal guitar riffs and once again J.D Cronise spoken word style catchy vocals, whilst everything sounds that little bit heavier this time around for The Sword, the whole song writing seems that more polished off with the way the songs run for even longer and also the big variety within the songs.

All the songs on the album follow the same fashion, with their big solid guitar riffs, catchy groove and near spoken word vocals, well until the ‘Untitled’ outro which closes the album is a mellow instrumental format.

If you are looking for a solid metal release that brings the old skool metal sound into the twenty first century then look no further than this double pack by The Sword as it brings 70’s Black Sabbath style rock into recent times and at the same time tells tales of myth and mythology which is bound to please all those War hammer and Dungeon And Dragons fans out there.

5/5

Review by Trigger
 Band Members
The Sword - Band
J. D. Cronise (vocals, guitar)
Kyle Shutt (guitar)
Bryan Richie (bass)
Trivett Wingo (drums)
 Track Listing
Age Of Winters
1. Celestial Crown
2. Barael's Blade
3. Freya
4. Winter's Wolves
5. Horned Goddess
6. Iron Swan
7. Lament for the Aurochs
8. March of the Lor
9. Ebethron

Gods Of The Earth
1. Sundering
2. Frost-Giant's Daughter
3. How Heavy This Axe
4. Lords
5. Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians
6. To Take the Black
7. Maiden, Mother & Crone
8. Under the Boughs
9. Black River
10. White Sea
 Band Related Links
The Sword Myspace
The Sword Official Website
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?